


swing low

by demotu



Series: post hoc [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: redismycolour, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-27
Updated: 2009-01-27
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:14:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demotu/pseuds/demotu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto and Gwen and a lack of momentum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	swing low

**Author's Note:**

> Day Twenty-Five entry for the [redismycolour](http://redismycolour.livejournal.com/) prompt challenge.

~

There’s a man in the trees.   
  
Megan sees him, Ianto knows. Megan always sees him, with the eyes of a child who still bothers to look in the trees for lions or dinosaurs. She waves, sometimes, if she feels like caring. Most of the time the swings are more interesting, or the sandcastle the older boy is making. They can be swung on, or stomped on, but he just watches, and most of the time that isn’t interesting.   
  
Gwen never sees him. She’s too busy watching Megan, and on the rare occasion when she turns and looks towards the trees to see what her daughter is waving at, Jack fades into the dark. She asks after Jack on occasion; obliquely, without names. How’s work, is the boss treating you okay, seeing anyone new? Ianto uses his name, says Jack’s fine and no, Jack and I are still together, and last week he made me reorganize his office filing cabinet which was hellacious but otherwise not bad. It’s awkward but it’s agreed on implicitly. She wants to know but can’t bring herself to ask. Signs of weakness and all that. Ianto understands.  
  
Ianto wonders, more often than he should, if Jack knows. Gwen does, he’s sure if it. She’s no idiot, and unless there’d been retcon involved, she would know. And Jack wouldn’t have done that, not to her. Not to his golden girl, though by then Ianto thinks he knew she wouldn’t be his for much longer. Jack’s never said anything to Ianto, but the way he watches Megan makes Ianto suspicious.  
  
Not suspicious of whether or not it’s true, because that he knows. Not until last year, when she was four, because her features before then had been ambiguously babyish, but Ianto sees her every week, and Jack every day, and he isn’t blind. Nor is he useless; alien technology is useful for so many things. So he knows, beyond doubt, and Jack is easily as resourceful as Ianto.   
  
Funny, he should be jealous. But he isn’t, because he has dinner at the Williams’ and pushes Megan on the swings while Gwen sips the coffee he’d brought in the thermos, and Jack stands in the trees.  
  
“Down, Ianto, down!”  
  
“Okay, okay.” The swing twists to a halt with Ianto’s hands on the chain, and Megan slides off. She kicks across the sand, pink wellies stirring up little clouds of dust in her wake. The kids under the slide look up, and then back at their work as she plops down beside them.  
  
“She’s getting big.” Ianto tugs onto the chain to lean into it.   
  
“You say that every week,” Gwen says, coming round to sit in the swing next to him, eyes on her daughter.  
  
“And I’m always right.”  
  
“Joy of children.” She laughs. “Never the same.”  
  
“No, I suppose not.” A pause. “She looks more like him, every year.”  
  
Gwen had been swaying back and forth, but at his words she plants her feet, gaze locked forward.  
  
“Yeah,” she says quietly.   
  
“Does Rhys…?”  
  
“Yes.” She kicks at the sand, stirring up her own clouds of dust. “Does…?”  
  
She can’t say it. Ianto takes pity on her, eyes flicking to the shadows where he knows Jack was standing. He’s disappeared, now, but that doesn’t mean much.  
  
“I think so.”  
  
“He must hate me.”  
  
Ianto shrugs. “That, I don’t think.”  
  
She twists her neck, lips folded in a bitter smile. “If he doesn’t, why does he stay away?”  
  
Ianto looks at Megan, the faded pink soles of the boots tucked under her bottom as she plays, the ribbon in her ponytail sliding precariously down. She turns a little, and her profile catches in the light. Ianto loves her, even if she isn’t his, and all at once he doesn’t think ill of Rhys anymore for not caring.  
  
“She gets bigger every day,” is all he can answer. “She gets older every day.”  
  
~


End file.
